Please review: nicora.net

Do you do nothing but redesign this site???

I definitely prefer some of the previous versions you've posted. You used to have a lot of really great photos in your designs but not anymore. This layout is really really boring in comparison.

The mousovers on the photo gallery don't work in Opera. The text is overlapping images in weird places. When you click on a photo, the pop-up large version shows up at the top of the page. This is a problem when the photo you're looking at is at the bottom of the page. This behaves very differently in Opera and Firefox. In Opera it just comes up on top, in Firefox the page is blurring and it's taking a long time and now I think it might have crashed my browser.

I think I might have told you this before, but I think it would be better to cut the fancy effects and keep things simple (and working!). It seems to be a little mroe responsive in Firefox now but I think that scroll open bit is quite unnecessary. The site in general is really slow in Firefox but I'm using beta 2.0 so that might be why.

Like Megan said, it's definitely more boring than the other ones. I really liked the one where it changed color schemes every time you went to a different page. Maybe you should allow users to pick a design...

When you click on a blog post, it does a little ajaxy thing and takes you to the permalink post. But when you hit the back button on the browser, it sometimes won’t take you back to the front. I clicked on Photos, then back to Front, I clicked a blog post, I hit the back button and I’m back to photos, not the front page. It’s kinda annoying because you have to click the < Back button on the post, not the browser.

On the Photos page when you click a picture, it expands with scroll bars and I think you should do away with those.

All the effects work fine in Firefox for me, nothing seems slow. I think I am on 1.5.0.4

Music: Nice songs but I still prefer metal

thanks guys, I have just updated the site with a few modifications. First, let me address a few things:

Opera: I have discontinued supporting Opera about 2 years ago, both personally and professionally, and since making that decision, there have been no complaints (on the proff side, mainly because they do not involve this level of JS). And I have to admit, according to my site stats, opera makes up less than 0.5% of the browser share and has been declining, so it really isn't worth the several hour effort to get things working in that particular browser.

Firefox: I don't have the time to support BETA releases, is there anyway you could test with a solid version?

The design: Yes, it is less flashy than previous iterations, but my goal for this site was to implement a new backend development platform, and I spent little time in creating an extravagant design, although I thought it was very clean and well thought out. I will shorty reconsider some of the elements.

Frequency in re-designing: I know, I know - always re-designing. That is because I use this site as a BETA environment for new methodologies that I implement, thanks for putting up with me =)

Back button: There are solutions in "fixing" the back button, none are elegant. This is a test to find out whether the benefits out weigh the disadvantages for breaking the back button "some of the time", such as Flickr has done. Jury is still out for me. Hopefully the browsers will introduce a standard way of dealing with AJAX and history.

Photobox animations: I have dramatically reduced the effort the browser has to make to display the photo box, Megan was the straw that broke the camels back. It was indeed too much, the animations were making the experience annoying, not pleasurable. The reduction should have sped up the transitions, it has for me anyways, let me know if it has for you.

Too many effects: Yep, but these are all required for an upcoming project, hence: this is my test bed. I tried to find the most elegant way to implement all these tricks, but its difficult with only three sections and 10,000 effects.

So if you get the chance, both Megan and Matt, please take another look --> I value these critiques, which is why I always come back, and I am not done tweaking the site per your suggestions.

Hmm, now when I click a picture Firefox freezes up for 5-15 seconds and I get that “Not Responding” thing on the Title bar of the browser. Everything goes white. That didn't happen before. I restarted FF and it still happens. I can't even get to your site now without that happening. Are you getting this too?

server must have been down, its been on and off lately

Nice page...atleast it's clean and your can read the text. Should work on adding content to fill up the blank spaces

It's pretty slick. I like how the articles turn blue when you mouse over them. I wish I had something more constructive to say, but I am incompetent.

anyone else want to chime in?

good design.
ilike your javascript application.

Not bad..how about some pictures on the front page?

as requested, photos added to the header, with the option to close.

I like the photo at the header, youve done a good job! keep it up!